Little Boxes
by PhoenixDragonDreamer
Summary: He would always have Them. He would always be able to gaze upon those messages and know that he had failed, a million times over.


_**Title:**_** Little Boxes  
><strong>_**Genre:**_** Gen  
><strong>_**Wordcount:**_** 1108  
><strong>_**Warnings:**_** Angst, Dark!fic, mention of Canon!Character-Death  
><strong>_**A/N:**_This is my first attempt at Doctor Who! I actually posted it unbeta'd May 20th, but with some convincing from friends, had it looked over and overhauled for actual _posting_-posting - so consider this the 'repost'. If it moves you, then I have accomplished much. Technically, this is a WIP made to soothe the Muse, I certainly hope you like what you read.**  
><strong>_**A/N2:**_Beta'd and cleaned up by My Ever-Exalted Minion, justmmy. Darling, I would be completely lost without you and your gentle coaxing, unbending honesty and lovely ways. You make each piece that much more! Thank you, darling...**  
><strong>_**Disclaimer(s):**_** I do not own the scrumptious Doctor or his lovely companions. That honor goes to the BBC and (for now) the fantastic S. Moffat. The only thing that belongs to me is this fiction - and I am making no profit. Only playing about...**

* * *

><p><em><span>The little boxes will make him angry...<span>_

He took them.

He knew why, even as he pretended he didn't.

He took them and hid them -

(But did he really? His Girl would know, She always did)

- and he knew they would forever be there. He would always have _Them_. He would always be able to gaze upon those messages and know that he had failed, a million times over.

Frozen Time in little boxes; held by the last Lord of Time; gruesome keepsakes of the Ages.

Sort of an anti-serial killer device for a natural-born Destroyer of Worlds.

And it wasn't the first time.

(Was there ever a first time?)

He also knew with a tired, almost savage joy that it wouldn't be the last.

His discovery, his heartbreak, his undoing - in little tiny boxes no bigger than the whole of his hand.

Centuries packed into fragile glass cubes.

It was incomprehensible, but there it was. Like so much of his life, it just was...unchanging, unmending - ever _long_.

The room only seemed smaller the more he collected - and it was (had been) a big room. It was only growing bigger, even as his willingness to breathe amongst all the ruins got that much smaller.

_The long dead..._

He collected those he couldn't save (so, so many) and kept them near (all of the Dead); kept them alive in this room, a perpetual memory of sorts. It started out only as a way to keep them fresh in his heart and mind, but as Time dragged on, as his black heart kept beating, he finally came to understand it for what it truly was: a never-ending torment, beautifully crafted and designed by himself.

Maybe he was very like a serial killer after all; all these Mementos of the dead, screaming across the centuries and now - now his People would join them in their rightful places of Honor.

All of Time and Space; all that Ever Happened or Ever Will -

And he could hear them calling even from the Console Room.

'_Why not _me_? Why everyone else, but not_ me_?_'

_Why does everyone look to me for the answer?_ He'd asked once (twice, _forever_). He knew why, though - because who else would in this big, battered, beautiful, bloody universe?

Who else?

_Do you have a room?_

He looked around the place he once called a Sanctuary, before it filled up with the haunts that drove him to live, to torment himself with this sick mess called 'alive'.

This was a place he had dressed and danced and eaten and slept and plotted his schemey little schemes - barely five hundred and as naive and raw as when he was two hundred.

But he learned.

He learned quickly.

All it took was the push of that little, tiny, red button - and he learned enough to fill a Matrix worth of lifetimes.

Barusa had always said he was a quick study.

Just not quick enough, in the end.

Where he had once taken refuge away from stress and worry and the ache that always comes from loss is where he now runs to bathe in it. Wash himself in the blood of all he had destroyed - sometimes by being there, sometimes by _not_being there; sometimes just by the mere fact of his existence. He would wrench himself away from the half-mad joy of his beautiful Old Girl (always there, always) and reminded himself of Why, just as a penitent will lash himself to shore up his sins before an angry god.

There were no more angry gods...they were all phantoms of the mind, now. Each one a screaming fury, pleading from beyond the pale -

_Help us, _help us_, Theta - you are the only one who can. By the Eye of Rassilion - keep us from the clutches of the dark!_

- and so...he sent them to it.

Heavens help him, he did just that.

They pleaded for respite and he sent them to it in a fiery ball of Oblivion.

Amy asked him if he needed forgiveness.

He needed more than forgiveness - _so much more_. He needed the hate, the questions, the raw anger and pain - he needed someone to ask him _why_; as he, himself, wasn't really too sure anymore.

To save them all from the Daleks?

To save them all from _themselves_?

Neither? Both?

There wasn't an answer anymore, not really.

Maybe there never had been.

He did as he had been instructed. For the first time and the last time and as much as he loved his Sexy Old Girl (as much as they needed each other), he wished he had flung open Her doors that day and met his own Oblivion. And for the first time (but not the last) She had forced him to _live_, forced his regeneration to pass - and though he could understand it, he sometimes hated Her for it.

Love was a complicated thing it seemed.

And that's what his room was.

The ultimate display of Love that had somehow rotted to hatred. He didn't know how, or why (he never knew _why _anymore, if he had ever really known) but he found a black comfort in it.

Amy and Rory slept the sleep of the just and beautiful only two floors above him. As they should.

As he did no longer.

His dreams were no longer a respite, his sleep no longer an escape, a refreshment.

This. _This _was all he needed.

He placed his little boxes on their new shelf and Listened, immersing himself in Ancient Rage and Cold, tears like tracks of fiery ice down the planes of his Young-Old face. He wrapped himself in the past and rejoiced in the pain of tomorrow, letting it temper the hot iron of a TimeLord's wrath.

One day he would join them all - all things pass eventually and one day that time would come. Maybe sooner than he'd (hoped) expected. He would continue to live and breathe and eat and laugh and pretend to sleep amongst the Shrine of the Long Dead; continue to live the existence of the Renegade he had started out as.

A sham in Doctor's clothing.

But he could do it only so long as he had Them to keep him company.

He opened his mind up to the Screams and Terror of his People, the last living TimeLord reaching across the chasm of years to touch what was dead; his TARDIS mourning him as he mourned Them, Her beacon shining deep into space and its perpetual Twilight...


End file.
